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The leading provider of global news, comment and analysis for the telecommunications industryTue, 03 Mar 2015 20:08:15 +0000en-GBhourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1Telefónica partners with Samsung on mobile security, BYODhttp://telecoms.com/233392/telefonica-partners-with-samsung-on-mobile-security-byod/
http://telecoms.com/233392/telefonica-partners-with-samsung-on-mobile-security-byod/#commentsMon, 17 Mar 2014 09:48:32 +0000http://www.telecoms.com/?p=233392Telefónica Digital, the digital services wing of Spanish operator Telefónica announced a deal with Samsung on Monday that will see the Korean vendor’s recently revamped mobile application containerisation platform Knox made available to Telefónica Digital’s global enterprise and public sector customers.

The move comes as organisations in both the private and public sectors face continued challenges in providing secure access to corporate data on both corporate and non-corporate issued devices.

Samsung introduced Knox in 2013 as an enterprise-grade mobile security platform specifically for its own high-end Android devices. It uses mobile virtualisation to sandbox applications, keeping mobile and corporate information separated and encrypted so users only need one mobile device for both work and non-work activities instead of two.

“This agreement reflects Telefónica’s commitment to provide innovative security solutions to its customers,” said Oliver Martínez, director of security and ehealth services at Telefónica. “With Knox, we are now in a position to bring the best mobile security solution for our enterprise, MNC and Public Administration customers who are using Samsung´s devices.”

Rob Orr, vice president of enterprise sales at Samsung Mobile Europe, said: “We are seeing a requirement in the market to combat security challenges and look forward to working with Telefónica to respond to the increasing convergence between consumer and enterprise technology.”

The announcement comes as CIOs continue to struggle with securing mobile devices as they move to make their organisations more flexible.

Research published last month by enterprise IT incumbent Dell reveals significant increases in IT spending on security solutions as traditional workplaces to transform into cloud-focused BYOD cultures. But at the same time, over 40 per cent of the 1,440 IT pros surveyed for the research claimed to lack confidence in cloud security solutions for mobile platforms currently on the market today, meaning a huge opportunity for new vendors to grow into the expanding market.

]]>http://telecoms.com/233392/telefonica-partners-with-samsung-on-mobile-security-byod/feed/0The future of cloud – Telstra’s perspectivehttp://telecoms.com/223082/the-future-of-cloud-telstras-perspective/
http://telecoms.com/223082/the-future-of-cloud-telstras-perspective/#commentsMon, 17 Feb 2014 12:25:40 +0000http://www.telecoms.com/?p=223082The number of internet-connected video devices is set to exceed the human population by 2017 thanks to the explosion of smartphone, and tablets and the APAC region is acting as the engine room to this growth. There has been a change in the way we interact with this type of technology, with cloud enabling end-users to access this content remotely. Young tech savvy consumers, dubbed the ‘Y’ generation, have grown up surrounded by technological innovation and are unaware of how the connected and online experience is shaping their lives.

The changing human interaction with the cloud and its importance in our day-to-day lives has created a golden opportunity for businesses to use insights to increase customer satisfaction for both corporates and consumers. Organisations across APAC are embracing the IT transformations within cloud, big data and mobile—and learning how to better serve the needs of their customers.

The opportunity of cloud

Cloud has created transformation on an unprecedented scale, with the public/private cloud storage market predicted to be worth $46.8bn by 2018. Networks are increasingly being defined by dynamic functions and the introduction of business process service level agreements (SLAs). For instance, cloud platforms are being linked with traditional on premise applications, such as a Customer Relationship Management or Supply Chain Management environment. This is enabling the network to reshape itself and categorise its applications based on current activity levels so that network traffic and the needs of remote workers can be easily managed and prioritised.

Innovation in the cloud

Cloud providers have discovered different approaches to supply companies and consumers building private or hybrid platforms, and have expanded their services accordingly. We’re also seeing a growing number of applications developed by business customers in the cloud, who are more willing to develop their own as they are educated on its flexibility. The idea is simple: buying relevant computing space to test an approach and then shutting if off again when the activity has run its course reduces the risk for the business when compared to the previous options available.

With the cycle of applications gathering momentum, the enterprise app store has arrived on the scene as CIOs provide employees with a selection of applications endorsed and supported by the organisation. Until now this has had limited success, however, with the widespread adoption of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and publicly hosted secure applications, it is becoming more widespread as a way of enhancing productivity.

How can businesses maximise the opportunity?

To maximise the opportunity of cloud, businesses must keep flexible and agile, tailoring cloud platforms to offer solutions designed to individual customer needs. As providers recognise their strengths they will also identify partnership opportunities with vendors, offering complimentary technology to their existing portfolios.

For example, businesses that deploy application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing developers to design products based on an organisation’s services, will achieve success. Companies can build their web conferencing capabilities into another web-based application, such as instant messaging, enabling seamless collaboration and communication between individuals. The reality is that organisations rarely use applications in siloes, meaning those vendors offering API solutions that increase collaboration with complementary products and markets, stand to benefit from increased sales with their customers.

Intelligent insights deliver results

In recent times exploiting big data has been like trying to drink from a fire hydrant—we can access a lot of it but have little time to digest it. However, businesses will start applying different lenses to data sets so that they can identify what is relevant to them or impacting upon their business. By focusing on actionable data, businesses will be well placed to optimise their services and customer experience.

Looking further ahead into 2015, the use of data will become key in predicting future activity and risk management. This will be driven by ‘smart data’ platforms; assessing patterns and delivering forecast and trending data to enable improved business planning. For example, if a customer pays for their movie tickets via near field communication (NFC), the mobile operator could identify the most frequent days the user visits the cinema, and send them discount codes for these days. This approach to data analytics is increasingly becoming the norm in terms of how businesses operate.

Driving change

Confidence will drive changes in the cloud. Businesses across APAC have access to large amounts of tools and services from a variety of IT vendors, and have a greater knowledge and trust in new ways to address business challenges using the cloud.

Proactivity is another catalyst to change. Businesses will be increasingly pragmatic as more companies understand how the technology is making a real difference to their operations. Ultimately, the approaches being adopted will introduce increased elasticity addressing the two biggest ongoing challenges of business today: risk mitigation and profitability.

Almost every business function can be delivered from cloud as a service, enabling departments to take control over their IT spending rather than leaving it down to the specific IT division. For cloud businesses to stay ahead of the trend they must offer flexible and catered business models, especially with mobile becoming an exciting area of growth as consumers become integrated into the wider offering.

]]>http://telecoms.com/223082/the-future-of-cloud-telstras-perspective/feed/0Megafon joins Telefónica partnership programmehttp://telecoms.com/145662/megafon-joins-telefonica-partnership-programme/
http://telecoms.com/145662/megafon-joins-telefonica-partnership-programme/#commentsTue, 28 May 2013 13:43:06 +0000http://www.telecoms.com/?p=145662Russian operator MegaFon has become the latest carrier to join Teleónica’s partnership programme, which aims to pool resource, know-how and purchasing power across an international roster of telcos.

The deal will also see Telefónica extend the range of its international enterprise offering to Russia, with Megafon’s enterprise base given access to services across the Spanish incumbent’s footprint.

Telefónica added that the two firms may look to collaborate on cloud and M2M offerings as well.

Telefonica’s partnership programme includes operators with which the firm has equity relationships, like China Mobile and Telecom Italia, as well as non-related players including Bouygues, KPN and Telenor. The Spanish player said that the programme now has reach into 52 countries and a combined customer headcount of 1.5 billion.

Eduardo Navarro, Telefónica Group’s chief strategy and alliances officer, stated: “We are committed to jointly work to take advantage of our outstanding strategic alignment and to make available the benefits of Telefónica’s scale and breadth of business through the Telefónica Partners Program, as well as to tackle together the challenges the industry transition is posing to operators worldwide”.

]]>http://telecoms.com/145662/megafon-joins-telefonica-partnership-programme/feed/0EC launches cloud computing strategyhttp://telecoms.com/49926/ec-launches-cloud-computing-strategy/
http://telecoms.com/49926/ec-launches-cloud-computing-strategy/#commentsFri, 28 Sep 2012 09:17:39 +0000http://www.telecoms.com/?p=49926The European Commission has released details of a cloud computing strategy that it claims will create 2.5 million jobs and boost EU GDP to the tune of €160bn annually by 2020. The Commission’s plan for “Unleashing the potential for cloud computing in Europe” is intended to speed the uptake of cloud services in the region, according to Neelie Kroes, EU vice president for the digital agenda.

“Cloud computing is a game-changer for our economy,” said Kroes in a statement. “Without EU action, we will stay stuck in national fortresses and miss out on billions in economic gains. We must achieve critical mass and a single set of rules across Europe. We must tackle the perceived risks of cloud computing head-on.”

The Commission believes that the absence of common standards and contracts is dissuading enterprises from embracing cloud services, with fears around the safety of internal and customer data paramount. A proposed European Strategy for Cyber Security is to be put forward “in the coming months”, the Commission said.

The Commission said that key actions of the cloud strategy include:

“Cutting through the jungle of technical standards so that cloud users get interoperability, data portability and reversibility; necessary standards should be identified by 2013;

Support for EU-wide certification schemes for trustworthy cloud providers;

Development of model ‘safe and fair’ contract terms for cloud computing contracts including Service Level Agreements;

A European Cloud Partnership with Member States and industry to harness the public sector’s buying power (20 per cent of all IT spending) to shape the European cloud market, boost the chances for European cloud providers to grow to achieve a competitive scale, and deliver cheaper and better eGovernment.”

]]>http://telecoms.com/49926/ec-launches-cloud-computing-strategy/feed/0RIM to refocus on enterprise, says CEOhttp://telecoms.com/41860/rim-to-refocus-on-enterprise-says-ceo/
http://telecoms.com/41860/rim-to-refocus-on-enterprise-says-ceo/#commentsFri, 30 Mar 2012 10:07:11 +0000http://www.telecoms.com/?p=41860Research In Motion CEO Thorsten Heins has outlined a strategic overhaul of the Canadian device vendor aimed at refocusing the company on its enterprise service roots. But he conceded simultaneously that many of the firm’s traditional strengths are no longer valued as highly as they once were by its customer base.

Speaking on March 29th as part of the firm’s earnings update, Heins—who became CEO at the end of January this year—said that he had spent the last ten weeks conducting a “personal reality check” on the business, concluding that “substantial change is what RIM needs”.

Heins conceded, as many observers have noted, that RIM’s attempts to drive adoption outside of the core enterprise segment in which it achieved its success had seen the company spread itself too thinly. “Blackberry cannot succeed if we try to be everybody’s darling, and all things to all people,” he said.

RIM was caught napping by the BYOD (bring your own device) trend that has seen enterprise users looking to access enterprise services from their personal device. Heins said that the firm had seen “significant slowdown in our enterprise subscription growth rate as a result.” Nonetheless he maintained that the firm retains a leading position in the enterprise market which can be capitalised on with a renewed focus on the corporate segment.

The upcoming Blackberry Fusion platform will enable enterprise customer to manage iOS and Android devices as well as its own handsets, he said.

Contrary to a number of reports that followed the RIM earnings call, suggesting that the firm would withdraw from the consumer space altogether, Heins voiced the need for a “compelling consumer offering” from Blackberry. But he stressed that the firm would look to partner for content and consumer features, such as media consumption, rather than develop the functionality in-house.

He also sounded the death knell for the consumer VAS business that the firm has attempted to build through acquisition, saying that it would be “extremely difficult to make it profitable” and that the “heavy ongoing investment does not make sense given our market position.”

Heins said that the upcoming Blackberry 10 handsets and platform would address some of its product shortcomings, particularly in the US where it has lost ground. He also pledged to “aggressively incentivise” Blackberry 7 products in the meantime, in a bid to win customers upgrading from older Blackberry devices, or moving into the smartphone market for the first time.

Most worrying for RIM, though, is Heins’ admission that the roots to which he wants to return the company may be significantly weakened. “We have to realise that some of Blackberry’s traditional strengths of security, push and efficiency are not as highly valued by some customers,” he said.

He added that the firm is working to identify new ways to create value, but offered no indication as to what these might be.

Hein’s opening assertion that significant change is needed cannot be challenged. But if it is not clear what shape that change will take then the firm’s future remains shrouded in uncertainty. This uncertainly was underlined by Heins’ announcement that the firm will offer no guidance on specific quantitative indicators for the rest of fiscal 2013.

RIM’s revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012 was US$4.2bn, down 19 per cent sequentially, and 25 per cent year on year. The firm shipped 11.1 million smartphones in the three month period, down 21 per cent on the previous quarter.

Dennis Meurs, director of business intelligence at roaming specialist MACH

Dennis Meurs, director of business intelligence at MACH, discusses the data roaming revenue generating options available to MNOs looking for new sources of revenue in a turbulent market.

Not a week goes by without the mention of ‘bill shock’ in regards to roaming. News stories abound about consumers returning home to find hefty bills and of some mobile devices incurring data charges – despite the function having been supposedly switched off. Negative publicity has instilled fear among consumers and business users alike when it comes to travelling abroad and puts them off using their mobile device for data services. The situation has meant that for too long data roaming has not achieved its full potential as a source of revenue for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). MNOs are well aware of this reality and statistics from a number of European MNOs indicate that more than 40% of travellers switch off their data connection when abroad, preferring to use alternate methods including Wi-Fi and other offload access methods, thus side-stepping potential ‘bill shock’ risk, but equally not using the VPMN partner network. This represents a significant potential loss of revenue, for both the visited network and the home network.

Within Europe, EU legislation put into effect earlier this year has meant that mobile operators are now communicating more effectively with their subscribers about the types and levels of charges they might expect, as well as putting in place near real-time policy controls to ensure usage is properly monitored and managed. The FCC in the US has also commissioned a number of rules for MNOs to notify users when their monthly voice and data plans are nearing their limit. While these elements might protect subscribers from excessive bills and help them overcome concerns about roaming charges, subscribers still have very little idea about what a Megabyte of data actually means in terms of page views or downloads, thus continuing to impact possible data usage whilst travelling abroad. Many Smartphone devices are also set automatically to block data when roaming, although there have been some issues with devices transmitting data despite this function.

With roaming revenue from voice and SMS starting to plateau, the time is right for MNOs to do more to encourage mobile data roaming on their and their partner networks, and fully embrace this new revenue and subscriber loyalty enhancing opportunity. In order to do this, MNOs need to develop a better understanding of customer behaviour. They are sitting on a wealth of subscriber and equipment level roaming usage data. The difficulty traditionally has been to sort and use this data in order to gain useful information. The technology and tools that provide IMSI (subscriber) and IMEI (equipment type) level of business intelligence granularity are now becoming available to MNOs, signalling a new age of micro-segmentation for mobile roaming tariffs.

Using this level of detailed information about roaming data provides MNOs with the missing link helping them get to grips with core information on user behaviour. For example, when considering the lucrative enterprise segment, the marketing department at an MNO could identify their top 50 or top 100 enterprise accounts, then for each enterprise account identify the travel patterns of staff. If these staff are travelling but they are not using data services, then there is an opportunity to promote special tariffs to encourage data usage. The collection of subscriber usage data, carefully matched to user behaviour allows operators to innovate and develop highly tailored retail roaming packages based on the actual needs of individual customers. In reality, this means that MNOs can create packages that will serve individual companies and also address company-wide issues. For example, if a company executive travels regularly to Dubai, it would be possible to develop a roaming package for voice or data roaming that includes a ‘week pack’ for roaming in that region. When it comes to smartphone data usage, MNOs could create plans for specific device types such as the iPad to ensure users can enjoy the full functionality of their devices without it becoming too costly—thereby stimulating roaming usage.

Alongside this micro-segmentation, and in line with the current legislation in development across Europe and the US, MNOs need to be able to set usage policies and intervention criteria. One layer of intervention may result in subscribers receiving a text message alert as their payment plan threshold is approached, or even barring a subscriber from further activity if a particular limit is passed. In order to ensure the appropriate interventions are applied, such an approach can be scaled to each individual user. If we return to the enterprise segment example this means that a very senior executive at a particular enterprise may receive access to a greater amount of data usage, for example, compared with a more junior employee. This approach effectively applies pre-paid controls to post-paid subscriptions, but also encourages roaming data usage with peace of mind.

Data roaming is now booming and the time is right to maximise its market potential. As cultural and work lifestyles take subscribers out of their home-zones more frequently, they become more reliant on the services roaming can provide. Using the right tools, it is now possible to build flexible tariffs that encourage users to take advantage of the full functionalities of their phones when abroad. As the operating environment becomes increasingly saturated and competitive, the timing is right for MNOs to focus on their data roaming business model. In many countries there are a limited number of new subscribers available, so growth must be fuelled by more innovative and strategic methods, which take into account the fast-developing marketplace and the increasingly mobile user. By recognising new revenue development opportunities, MNOs stand to reap fruitful returns.